How the Spirit Does What the Law Could Not Do

For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through
the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4
so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do
not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For
those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things
of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things
of the Spirit. 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the
mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on
the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to
the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who
are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 However, you are not in the
flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.
But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not
belong to Him.

We ended last week on this note: not only can the law not
justify, but it cannot sanctify either. In other words, it is
futile to turn to the law to have our condemnation lifted, and it
is futile to turn to the law to have our rebellion against God and
our love affair with everything but God taken away. Everyone of us
has two deep problems – much deeper than our financial
problems or our relational problems or our health problems. We are
guilty before God and deserve condemnation, and we are rebellious
against God and love his creation more than we love him. And my
point last week, based on Romans 8:3-4, is that neither of these
problems can be fixed by the law of God – by the Ten
Commandments given at Mount Sinai.

But they must be fixed or we perish. To fix the first one God
turns us away from the law to Christ. Verse 3: "What the Law could
not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He
condemned sin in the flesh." God took away our condemnation by
condemning Christ in our place. Now what did God do to fix the
second problem: our rebellion against God and the addiction we have
to crave God's creation more than we crave God?

Did he turn us away from the law for justification and then send
us back to it for sanctification? Is the law the first and
chief and decisive focus of our lives if we want
to triumph over our rebellion and our craving for God's creation
over God? If we want to love our enemies and not return evil for
evil, and have patience and kindness, and be bold and courageous in
the cause of righteousness, and endure hardship joyfully in service
of the gospel, and spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all
things for the joy of all peoples, then where shall we turn for
help? How do we become holy, loving, and Christ-like after we are
justified by faith alone?

What do you do? Where do you turn? What is your focus and
passion? How do you fight for holiness and love and
Christ-likeness? You must fight. The alternative of pursuing
holiness is to perish (Hebrews 12:14). How do you fight? Is law the
key that unlocks a life of love?

The Law Is not the Key to Unlock a Life of Love

Paul says that the key won't work. The law cannot do what needs
to be done. There are at least three reasons why it cannot.

1. The Law Cannot Remove Our Condemnation

The first one we have spoken of enough, so we will pass over it
quickly: the great ground of transformation is the removal of
condemnation; the law cannot remove it; and so the law cannot
provide the basis for our transformation. If we want to be changed
into the image of Jesus, we must first have the verdict of guilty
reversed – and the law cannot do that, only God can because
of Christ. And we receive it by faith alone.

2. The Law Cannot Conquer the Flesh

But there is a second reason why the law cannot sanctify or
transform: It cannot conquer the flesh. That is, it cannot change
us at the root of our nature: our fallenness and rebellion against
God. It cannot take away our reluctance to love God and our
treasonous preference for God's gifts above God (Romans 1:23). On
the contrary, Paul teaches us that the law aggravates our sin and
stirs up our rebellion.

Let's review a few of those places where Paul says this, so that
we arm ourselves from thinking that the law can get anywhere with
our deep rebellion, which Paul calls our "flesh" in Romans 8:3
– "what the law could not do, weak as it was through the
flesh."

The Law Came to Increase Transgressions

Let's look at Romans 5:19-21. Paul closes his contrast of Adam
and Christ like this: "For as through the one man's [Adam's]
disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the
obedience of the One [Christ] the many will be made righteous." Now
this raises the question: "Well, if righteousness comes to us
through the obedience of Christ, and not through our own obedience,
then why the law? Isn't the law given to provide righteousness?"
Paul answers in verse 20, "The Law came in so that the
transgression would increase."

In other words the law is not the remedy for our condemnation or
our rebellion. In fact, it is given to turn our inner rebellion
into more blatant and visible transgressions. We see this again in
Romans 7:5, "While we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which
were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of
our body to bear fruit for death." In other words, the law does not
conquer the flesh, it rouses the flesh. The law plays into the
hands of our own sinful passions and stirs them up. We see the same
thing in Romans 7:8, "But sin, taking opportunity through the
commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind." The law
does not conquer the flesh, on the contrary, it gives the flesh
another base of operation. Another place to show its rebellion.

So Paul asks in Romans 7:13, "Therefore did that which is good
become a cause of death for me?" He answers, "May it never be!
Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by
effecting my death through that which is good [the law!],
so that through the commandment sin would become utterly
sinful." So the function of the law is to make sin more visible in
transgressions, more blatant and prevalent in rousing the flesh,
and more manifestly vicious in its use of what is good to do its
ugly work.

You see this again in Galatians 3. Paul contrasts the
inheritance of life promised to Abraham by faith with the idea that
it could be secured by law. He says in verse18, "For if the
inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise;
but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. (19) Why
the Law then? It was added because of transgressions,
until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been
made."

Transgressions Increased to Display More Grace and More
Glory

So we ask, Why? Why would God design redemptive history like
that? Why would he add the law to increase the trespass? Back to
Romans 5:20. Verse 20 begins, "The Law came in so that the
transgression would increase." Then, to show where God is really
going in his purpose, Paul immediately adds: "But where sin
increased, grace abounded all the more." God's purpose to increase
the transgression by introducing the law was not an end in itself.
It was an occasion for displaying more grace.

And the ultimate purpose is seen in verse 21: "So that, as sin
reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness
to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." The ultimate aim is
to make sure that Jesus Christ gets the glory for the triumph of
righteousness in the world – both in justification and
sanctification.

That leads us to the last reason the law can't sanctify us. But
before we turn there, make sure you see this second point: the law
can't remedy our rebellious reluctance to treasure God because it
stirs it up. Our sinful love of independence and control and
self-exaltation simply makes the law into a new theater for revolt.
The law gets taken captive by the flesh and made a servant of sin.
If we turn to the law to fix our rebellion and the our adulterous
indifference to God, it will not work. We will only become
worse.

3. The Law Couldn't Give the Son the Glory for Justification
& Sanctification

The last reason the law cannot sanctify we just saw at the end
of Romans 5: God's purpose is to sanctify us in a way that the
credit and the glory for our liberation and transformation go to
Jesus Christ, not to ourselves and not to the law. Therefore God
calls us not to turn to the law for transformation – for love
and holiness and Christ-likeness – but to turn to the living
Christ, who worked for us in history and works in
us now by his Spirit.

The law cannot magnify the Son of God as more glorious and more
valuable and more desirable than the pleasures of sin. Only when
Christ himself wins our affections over all contestants will he get
the glory God means for him to have. Even if you did turn to the
law and experience some measure of success in becoming a
law-abiding person (as the Pharisees certainly did, including Saul
of Tarsus) Christ would get no honor from that. But God's whole
purpose in the plan of redemption is that his Son get the glory not
only for our justification, but also for our sanctification.
And
this the law could not do.

The Key to Sanctification: Walking by the Spirit

What then is the key to sanctification – holiness, love,
Christlikeness? Verse 4 says the key is to walk by the Spirit. "God
condemned sin in the flesh (4) so that the requirement of the Law
might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh
but according to the Spirit." I'm going to argue in the weeks to
come (from Romans 13:8 and Galatians 5:14) that the "fulfillment of
the law" is a life of Christ-exalting love. But for now just focus
on the means appointed by God to get there: "Walking by the
Spirit."

Whose Spirit? Romans 8:9-10 tells us: "However, you are not in
the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God
dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of
Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in
you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is
alive because of righteousness." The "Spirit of God" and the
"Spirit of Christ" and "Christ" appear to be inseparable and almost
interchangeable ways of describing the life-changing presence of
God in the life of the believer.

But the point I want to make is simply this: it is not by
turning to the law that we fulfill the law and lead lives of love,
it is by turning to the living Christ. The power of sanctification
is not the law, but the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ. And the
instrument of our appropriation of this power is not to turn to the
law but to fix our gaze and our faith on the glory of Christ
crucified and risen, reigning and indwelling. The key is Christ,
seen and savored above all things. That is the power that
sanctifies. And this is the method of holiness that glorifies him,
not the law and not us.

Let's look at a few confirmations of this.

The parallel between Romans 7:4 and 7:6 show the same thing as
Romans 8:4 and 9. "Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to
die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be
joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order
that we might bear fruit for God." This is the clearest statement
of all that the looking to the law is not the first or chief or
decisive means of bearing fruit for God. If you want to bear fruit
for God you must die to the law. If you want to live a life of love
you must die to the law. If you want to fulfill the law you must
die to the law. That is you must not turn to law-keeping as your
first or chief or decisive way to defeat your rebellion and become
a loving and holy person. To keep the law the way God wants it kept
in this age you must turn away from it to "be joined to another, to
Him who was raised from the dead." Then you will "bear fruit for
God." And the fruit is love. Love is the fruit of turning to the
living Christ and finding him more to be desired than everything
that hinders love.

And you can see in the parallel with verse 6 that what Paul has
in view here is the same Spirit that he does on Romans 8:4. "But
now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by
which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and
not in oldness of the letter." Serving in the newness of the Spirit
in verse 6 parallels bearing fruit for God by being joined to
Christ in verse 4. Serving in the Spirit and bearing fruit from
union with Jesus are the same thing. The Spirit is the Spirit of
Christ.

The Law Cannot Make You a Loving Person

The point is this: The law simply can't make you a loving
person. It can't overcome your rebellion. It can't conquer your
addiction to the praise of men. It is letter. And letter kills.
Only the Spirit – the living, indwelling Jesus Christ –
gives life. He changes us to the core. He writes the law on our
heart. He wins from us our deepest delight and admiration and
trust. And thus he breaks the power of cancelled sin.

The aim of God is that Jesus get the exaltation and that you get
the liberation. In Romans 15:18 Paul says, "I will not presume to
speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me,
resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles." Where did our
obedience come from? It came from Jesus Christ and what he has done
through the gospel.

And why is that important? Because unless you pursue obedience
through seeing and savoring him, you won't get the
transformation and he won't get the glorification. You
stay in bondage, and he is dishonored.

How to Pray If You Are Dead to the Law & Love to Bear Fruit
for God

How then should we pray and move forward? Let's bow and I will
lead you in a prayer built on this truth:

O Lord Jesus, I am by nature a rebel and find more pleasure in
what you made than in you. I am sick and corrupt. O Christ, how
plain it is to me now that I need something so much deeper and more
powerful and more personal than the law. I know your law is good.
But I am flesh, and powerless to obey. And so, Lord Jesus, I turn
away from the law, to you. You are my only hope. I turn away from
my own resources and bank on your blood and righteousness for
acceptance, and on your help for holiness. I turn away from all
earthly pleasures and take you, and you alone, as the
all-satisfying joy of my life. I renounce Satan and all his ways
and all his works. I repent of all the sins I know, and those you
know and I don't.

And, O Lord, I pray that you would have mercy on me, and open
the eyes of my heart to see you as you really are in all of your
surpassing beauty. I pray that you would display your glory to me
in the gospel. What I see and know of you now, I embrace with all
my heart. I receive you as my Savior and Lord and Treasure. And ask
you to dwell mightily in me and make yourself the Victor in my life
so that when I love my brothers and my enemies – as I intend
to do with all my heart – the glory will go to you.

Amen.

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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